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Infrared Astronomy
Near- and mid-infrared images of the spiral galaxy M81 surveyed by AKARI
A Near- and mid-infrared image of a part of Great Magellan Cloud by AKARI
The Infrared Astronomy group observes infrared radiated from space using balloons and satellites.
Balloons have successfully observed the far-infrared spectrum emitted from ionized carbon ions [CII] drifting in space.
One satellite mission was observation by infrared telescope IRTS launched aboard SFU in 1995. IRTS is the first Japanese earth-orbiting observatory for infrared astronomy observation. The IRTS survey achieved great success including the creation of the NIRS/MIRS point-source catalogues and the FILM/FIRP far-infrared image maps.
The AKARI (ASTRO-F) launched by M-V-8 in February 2006 is an orbiting infrared telescope to succeed IRTS and Japan’s first independent, full-scale infrared astronomical satellite.
AKARI’s observation continues to create an entire-sky infrared map of space even after the originally planned one-year mission. As a result, it covered about 94% of the entire sky with far-infrared surveys and also conducted mid-infrared surveys and over 5,000 pointing surveys.The observation data acquired by AKARI is now being analyzed intensively.